


Six Degrees of Separation

by cakeisnotpie



Series: Variations on a Death [5]
Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Astrology, Character Death Fix, Fate, Fate & Destiny, Fix-It, Fortune Telling, M/M, Oracles, Prophecy, Self-Fulfilling Prophecy, Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, Variations on a theme, fuck fate, language is arbitrary, wiggle room
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-08
Updated: 2020-11-08
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:34:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,667
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27458074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cakeisnotpie/pseuds/cakeisnotpie
Summary: Of course, it all came tumbling down on Phil because that’s what Fate does. She’s a cruel bitch who gives just enough of a clue to hang yourself with and laughs as you try to squirm out of your destiny. Phil didn’t run from his -- Oedipus was required reading and a cautionary tale to take to heart. Phil, instead, tried to manage his curse, to find a path that mitigated the worst of it but let him have as normal a life as was ever going to be possible.  Phil ‘managed’ until one Clinton Francis Barton walked into SHIELD headquarters, bleeding, limping, and trailing Marcus … no, Nick Fury … into his office.
Relationships: Clint Barton/Phil Coulson, minor -- Steve Rogers/James "Bucky" Barnes
Series: Variations on a Death [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1571656
Comments: 49
Kudos: 135





	Six Degrees of Separation

_Out flew the web and floated wide_

_\-- the mirror crack’d from side to side,_

_“The curse is come upon me,” cried_

_The Lady of Shalott._

_But Lancelot mused a little space_

_He said, “she has a lovely face;_

_God in his mercy lend her grace,_

_The Lady of Shalott_

  
  
  


Phil Coulson was born in a quiet cycle of the Delta moon when Mercury was in retrograde. No omens, no comet, no eclipse, not even a stray cloud crossed the sun. Just a normal day in a small Midwest town for an uncomplicated delivery of a healthy child. 

The hospital seer visited for fifteen minutes, did a cursory reading, and proclaimed Phil would have an average life, much to the relief of his mother. She had long ago been told that from her line would come a great epic, the kind the Greeks waxed poetic about and Shakespeare staged. It was already enough to handle that Phil’s sister was a Capricorn with Leo in ascendance. Phyllis was a terror at 3-years-old; what her official prophecy would be, well, if the tears and temper tantrums were any forewarning, Phyllis was going to trail trouble wherever she went. No, the Coulsons were happy to take home their bouncing baby boy, all 7 pounds and 8 ounces of plain Philip James. 

By the time Phil was in third-grade and had his official school appointment with the Oracle on the calendar, no one could imagine his future to be anything traumatic. In fact, no one thought much about Phil in general; he was the quiet kid who did well in all his classes, was especially good at math, and wore a Captain America shirt almost every day. His teachers were too busy dealing with the kid who liked to set fires and the one who was supposed to kill her father; Phil sailed calmly through his days, building lego towers and exercising his fifth-grade reading level on all the comic books he could find. 

When the day came, Phil’s father was away on business -- always absent for every major event, that was Tim Coulson’s destiny or so he said. His mother, who’d planned to be there, got a call from the middle school about Phyllis punching a boy during gym and the principal only had one appointment slot open. So Phil went alone to Mr. Delphi’s office, in his pressed chinos and his button-down red, white, and blue plaid shirt -- his insistence since his Mom wouldn’t let him wear his Cap tee -- and took the uncomfortable plastic chair at the table with the mirror and already ground herbs laid out. The candle smoke tickled Phil’s nose, his eyes watering at the scent of the incense, but he quietly waited. He was good at waiting; he had lots of experience in not being noticed. 

“Oh, Phil.” Mr. Delphi looked up after a few minutes from the files on his desk. “I didn’t see you come in. Well, let’s do this, shall we?” 

A quick incantation with some hand waving and Mr. Delphi’s forehead crinkled as he squinted at whatever he saw. 

“That’s …” He stopped himself and glanced at Phil, a fake smile flitting across his face. Phil knew all about those; his sister Phyllis always used them when she wanted to get him to do something and his Dad looked at his Mom that way. “Sometimes it takes a minute. Let me start again.” 

This time, the Oracle chanted, picking up the incense and drawing symbols in the air. His face grew serious as he stared into the cloudy reflection, then he drew in a breath and his eyes flew up to meet Phil’s. 

“Oh.” Mr. Delphi cleared his throat. “Oh, Phil. I’m so, so sorry.” 

What came next -- a few words that would affect the rest of Phil’s life -- should have been recorded as were all prophecies, tucked into school files and used to color code students for class placements and college prep. But these simple lines, once Mr. Delphi uttered them, slipped away; in the time it took for the Oracle to snuff out the flames and flick the switch on the little fan to clear the air, they’d already become memory, a wispy cloud pulled apart by the predestined path Phil had been placed upon. 

Phil left the office confused and scared, his fingers trembling so bad he curled them into fists and tucked them in his pockets. After a nod to the secretary, he headed for the rarely used boy’s bathroom by the art wing. Only when he was inside a stall did he let the tears that were gathered slide down his cheeks, his sobs muffled by biting his lip. 

No one asked when he got back to his homeroom, late afternoon math problems on the board. The bus dropped him off in front of his house, and his dad, too busy screaming at his mom about the phone call from the school and Phyllis’ suspension, didn’t notice him slip through the door and disappear into his room. Only later, when his mom came in to tuck him in and kiss him goodnight, did she ask what the Oracle had said and, by then, Phil had decided not to tell her, that she’d cried enough for one day. And so he lay awake, a little boy, destined to be alone, to go unnoticed, to never be with anyone he loved, and silently wept until fell asleep. 

**_To see in a mirror darkly, to watch but never be part of._ **

By the time he finished high school, Phil had discovered two important caveats to his prophecy. 

He could have friends, just not a lot of them. Some wanted to use him for one thing or another -- to get them through calculus or hook up with his sister. Others were quiet kids like him who gravitated away from the pull of the popular crowd, the born leaders and charismatic doomed heroes. A couple kind of liked his geeky comic book self; they had their own swords of Damocles hanging over their heads that they never talked about either. Phil did all the things teenagers usually did -- football games and hanging out and eating pizza and worrying about college acceptance letters. In a way, he thought, he had it easy, sliding past all the drama and never catching Mrs. Murtaugh’s gimlet stare and sharp rebuke when he was late. 

He also realized that sex had nothing to do with love. A handjob behind the bleachers was no problem as long as he accepted the guy wouldn’t remember it next week. His first blow job was from Billy Andres, a simple transaction; Phil told his sister that Billy was his boyfriend so she would sleep with him. As she so often said, anything Phil had, she could take away. No, getting off wasn’t an issue; it was the loneliness and longing as he watched couples walk the hallway holding hands. The one crush he had on the captain of the chess club (who also happened to be a cross-country runner, slim and muscular) ended with the guy forgetting Phil’s name and ignoring him completely for the whole of senior year. 

As time passed, Phil believed he’d learned to live apart, watching the world’s reflection, a ghost passing through. He had his mother who still called him once a week while he was away at college, and his roommate was a decent sort who included Phil when his friends came over if nothing else. There were his ROTC buddies; something about going through summer training together made Phil more substantial in their memories. He even dated -- never more than once, but at least he occasionally was touched by someone other than himself. 

It wasn’t until he was in Iraq and that damn IED blew, tossing the truck in the air and flinging them across the road, that things changed. When Phil woke up in the medical tent, Marcus Johnson was beside him, bandages wrapped around his head; looking at Phil, Marcus cursed -- not an unusual occurrence -- but then he said, “What the fuck, Coulson? You going to eat all that mac and cheese?” and, like that, Phil had another person that could see him. Maybe it was Marcus’ missing eye -- everyone knew that true sight was given to the blind -- or maybe it was Marcus’ prophecy of keeping both eyes open if he wanted to survive. Phil didn’t know and he didn’t care; from that day on, Phil became Cheese and the two of them mustered out together, stumbled back to the U.S., got recruited by SHIELD and never looked back. 

Of course, it all came tumbling down on Phil because that’s what Fate does. She’s a cruel bitch who gives just enough of a clue to hang yourself with and laughs as you try to squirm out of your destiny. Phil didn’t run from his -- Oedipus was required reading and a cautionary tale to take to heart. Phil, instead, tried to manage his curse, to find a path that mitigated the worst of it but let him have as normal a life as was ever going to be possible. Phil ‘managed’ until one Clinton Francis Barton walked into SHIELD headquarters, bleeding, limping, and trailing Marcus … no, Nick Fury … into his office. 

“Take him, Cheese,” Nick said, tossing a file on Phil’s desk. “Smartass punk will drive me crazy.” 

Blue-grey eyes the color of a storm at sea, biceps that pulled at the cotton of his cheap shirt, muscular thighs that strained against ratty jeans -- It was like the world had been black and white and now it exploded into technicolor. Barton rubbed a hand across the back of his neck, a bashful motion that sank into Phil’s gut with a flash of libido as deadly as an asp’s bite. The curse fell, the mirror cracked, a sharpened sword’s blade slicing Phil’s heart in two. 

**_That which you love will know you not; always receding and out-of-reach._ **

There was nothing to do but pack the pieces away, seal off any avenue of hope, never speak of the pain that took up residence in his chest. Having Hawkeye as part of SHIELD was too important to risk driving him away. Phil had years of practice of casual friendship; he could balance the time spent together with stretches apart, keep his voice even, his eyes shuttered, and his hands busy. And he did … for a while. There were years of training and low-level assignments and perches on buildings far, far away. They worked well together from the beginning, sharing a way of thinking that seemed intuitive and natural, so much so that others began to whisper about shared brains and beds and the rumor mill churned out all sorts of tidbits that ‘proved’ they were more than asset and handler, so much so that, 1,372 days after that moment in Phil’s office, Clint flat out asked him about it, cornered him in the garage between an SUV and a nondescript black sedan. Phil’s breathing sped up with Clint’s nearness, his throat dry at the very thought of having to find the words to deny the gordian knot that wrapped his heart and held it tight. 

“They think we’re a couple,” Clint said, a glint of humor in his eyes. “Crazy, huh?”

Phil Coulson, level five Agent of SHIELD, never blinked, but that little boy who left Mr. Delphi’s office huddled into himself later, curled in the same bed he’d had when he first heard the prophecy, and laid awake, running through possible futures until he had a plan. A very cold and lonely future, but a plan all the same, one that kept Clint in his orbit but never too close. The rumors died down, their missions were a success, and Clint remembered his name; it wasn’t enough, would never fill the hole in Phil’s heart, but it was better than losing him. Fury definitely suspected, but knew all too well the dangers of challenging a prophecy -- like he’d ever let go of his need to control everything -- and let Phil handle it on his own. 

When Clint showed up after three days going AWOL, dragging the Black Widow behind him, Phil had to recalibrate yet again. She took one look at mild-mannered Agent Coulson and peeled back the layers to see the steely determination of Philip James, a kindred spirit. While others were convinced she was a double-agent and would destroy SHIELD from the inside out, Phil knew within moments that, like him, she had built walls within walls, hiding her true destiny so far under the layers that no one could find it. And Clint, well, Clint was the yin to her yang, the man who couldn’t miss to the woman who couldn’t be hit. He never asked her to share her deepest secrets and she never pushed him to be anything but what he was. With Phil on the comms running their ops, he became the unstated assumption, the foundation no one saw beneath the most effective team in SHIELD history. Just a whisper of The Hawk and The Widow and criminals quaked at the thought. Strike Team Delta, Barton and Romanoff … and their handler.

**_Forgotten in this lifetime; only visible after._ **

But Fate catches up to even the most diligent; she may play semantic games about who killed who and how you died, but, in the end, she has the last say. Phil met his idol Captain America and threatened to taser Tony Stark. Made a friend of Pepper Potts, a woman who lived in another’s shadow. Met a god who called him by name. Then Loki took Clint, and, standing in that hallway, with the Hulk on a rampage in the bowels of the ship and Clint systematically destroying the engines, Phil finally understood the last line of his prophecy. He would have laughed if he had the time; instead, he keyed in the lock code, picked up the gun and went to face Loki by himself, the man forgotten, about to become the man remembered. It hurt like hell, that spear through his chest, and yet Phil was at peace as he slid down the wall, leaving a trail of blood in his wake. 

“You’re going to lose,” he told Loki. “It’s in your nature.” 

“Your heroes are scattered, your floating fortress falls from the sky... where is my disadvantage?” Loki asked.

“You lack conviction,” Phil said because it was true. His whole life had been a demonstration of conviction, his steadfast belief in the destiny laid out before him. The Avengers needed him, needed his death, the push to pull them together to save the Earth. 

Phil Coulson died … and they remembered his name. 

* * *

Clinton Francis Barton was born in the middle of a storm when Uranus was ascendant in all its chaos and Mars overshadowed the benefic power of Venus. The only saving grace was Saturn, just rising, and its steadfast stubbornness. Birthed at home with only a neighbor as a midwife, there was no hospital, no seer, no prophecy, just a prayer to the gods that Clint was a quiet baby who wouldn’t cause any trouble in an already tumultuous household.

His mother homeschooled him after the disaster that was kindergarten. Even holding Clint back a year didn’t help; his file was rife with reports of mysterious bruises and misbehavior and sullen silences. It was easier to sit him at the table to color his letters purple and faster to tuck him away in his room when his father came home. They moved so often to avoid eviction that the social workers assigned to his and Barney’s case lost track of them by the time he was nine; he missed his required date with an oracle which, all things told, was a blessing. Barney’s prophecy promptly got him labeled a hopeless fuck up and Harold Barton, staring through the bottom of an empty whisky bottle at his own destiny, was all too quick to blame his youngest son for every problem anyway.

Then Harold went and got himself and his wife killed by driving drunk, and Clint was in and out of foster homes so frequently that the good ones didn’t have time to ask and the bad ones just pocketed the state checks and never cared. Running off to join the circus was Barney’s idea, but Clint went willingly, tired of the endless shuffle of faces and places combined with the constant fear that made him watch his every move. 

Carson’s Traveling World of Wonders wasn’t much better except that someone handed Clint a bow and he was in love for the first time in his life. Between the twang of the string and echo of applause, there were some nice carnies, people who looked out for a skinny kid with spiky blonde hair because they cared, and some who did because he brought in lots of customers with his balancing on horseback and splitting one arrow after another. Clint didn’t mind the ulterior motives; at least they wanted him there. 

Madame Dione let him hide in her trailer when Trickshot was on a bender; she realized that Clint was unread and how dangerous that was. Careening around without a sense of why or who or what could only lead to tragedy, she believed, so one day, when Clint was 16 and had just moved to the second to last spot on the order of performance, she invited him in, lit her best incense, cedar and tarragon, and pulled out her crystal ball. As she looked, a purplish smoke filled the globe. 

  
  


**_You will never miss -- except for the one time it matters most._ **

  
  


Despite her warnings that the words could mean many different things, all Clint cared about at the moment was being the star attraction; what did the rest mean in the grand scheme of things when money was coming in and he had adoring crowds cheering him on? When it all came crashing down, Duquesne’s treachery revealed, he was sure that was what the prophecy meant. Never once did he imagine that his brother would turn on him and leave him for dead. What could matter more than a bullet in his gut and the hatred in Barney’s eyes? 

After he slipped out of the hospital, he faked his age and a high school GED to enlist, made up some bullshit destiny, shipped out, and never looked back. Turned out, he was a damn good sniper -- best in Afghanistan -- but he was terrible at following orders. When his first tour was up, he moved on and became an even better independent contractor who charged high prices for impossible shots. 

In a tiny town on the southern U. S. border, he met a redhead who looked right through him and saw the little boy who didn’t believe he had any real worth. She sighed, took her knife from his throat, and sewed up the gunshot wound she’d given him before declaring they could work together but never sleep together. Clint liked his dick right where it was, thank you, so he agreed. One contract became two then four then more but she always left before they were finished to avoid any awkward emotional entanglements. With more and more success, he could pick and choose the jobs he wanted, and soon the name Hawkeye was bandied about enough to garner the attention of one Nick Fury who showed up in the middle of a gods-be-damned firefight and recruited him into SHIELD. Clint jumped ship, joined the good guys, confident he was on track to be the best.

**_Like an arrow, you will fly high but the mask will remain._ **

While his career trajectory was going like gangbusters, the rest of his life wasn’t. To say that Clint was unlucky in love was an understatement. He thought Bobbi Morse was the one; when that flamed out, he consoled himself with a string of short term flings and pretty much learned nothing from the whole marriage fiasco. Even trading blow jobs with Tony Stark didn’t rank on the top ten terrible decision scale when it came to who Clint climbed in bed with. For a guy who could stay hyper-focused and calm for days sitting out in the elements, waiting for his window, he had the attention span of a gnat when it came to matters of the heart. 

He knew there were betting pools in HQ about his non-existent love life and a line of people waiting to see how spectacularly he could mess up the next relationship. That Coulson rumor? Phil was nice and a damn good handler who’d saved Clint’s ass multiple times, made him laugh, and believed in him. Yeah, maybe Clint thought about it once or twice, even made a couple jokes, but Coulson was all business, so that was the end of that. He’d wait until he was older, he told himself, then rethink the whole wham-bam-thank-you philosophy. For now, he had Natasha by his side, his bow in hand, Coulson’s voice in his ear, and they were good, really good, fucking amazing actually, and that was enough. 

As Strike Team Delta became the best, they were always gone on missions for weeks and months on end. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d spent more than two nights in a row at his apartment and, turned out, it was possible to do away with jet lag if you kept crossing time zones fast enough. Rifle or bow, each shot pushed Clint’s reputation a little higher, and he wasn’t even at the top of his game yet. That scared boy who hid under his bed when his father was on a bender was now famous; bad guys literally cowered to hear Hawkeye and Black Widow were on their trail. When Fury brought up the Avengers Initiative the first time, Clint dusted off his old circus mask and laughed, ready to take his place alongside the likes of Iron Man and Captain America. 

That was the moment, of course, when Fate viciously reminded him of exactly how little it all mattered. 

  
  


**_To gain your heart, you must lose it._ **

  
  


“You have heart,” Loki said. 

In the chasm between the touch of the spear and the freezing of his soul, Clint saw it, the gaping hole at his center. A lonely expanse of barely lived-in rooms, a suitcase-sized life with only one bright red flame to light the vast darkness. Empty relationships with no meaning, his gaze fixated on the wrong target. The bitch about revelation was how it came at the worst possible moment when there was nothing he could do about the bone-shaking truth. Icy blue was creeping across his vision, his heart being sucked out of his chest, and Clint Barton, the man behind the mask, ceased to exist. 

* * *

  
  


“... fucked up, man, that’s what it is,” Stark was saying around bites of shawarma. “Can you imagine? To know that you were always going to be overlooked by everyone? Jesus, Coulson was metal as fuck to deal with that. Dying so we’d remember and avenge him? Screw Fate, I say; ”

Clint ached all over; his back was a patchwork of sharp pains and throbbing cuts. Exhaustion slowed his movements and scrambled his thoughts; only the gnawing hunger in his stomach kept him working on the food in front of him. Lift, bite, chew, swallow, repeat. It took far too long for Stark’s words to wind their way through his addled brain. 

“Coulson? Forget him?” Clint blinked slowly. “I know Phil and he’s not …” 

“Clint.” Natasha put a hand on Clint’s forearm; he stared at where they touched, unable to make sense of where her fingers stopped and his skin began. “Fury called it; Phil’s dead..” 

“Dead?” he repeated the word, rolled it on his tongue and let it fall past his cracked lips. “Nah, he’s in the van … or on the comms … Coulson?” 

“He went up against Loki on his own. He died bravely.” Steve Rogers’ voice was soft and sympathetic and wasn’t that a kick in the ass, Coulson’s idol talking about … about … “It was his destiny; to be unknown in his lifetime, but remembered after.”

“No.” Clint dropped the last of his sandwich. “I know him … knew him … Coulson’s not … Phil’s our .. he’s my … Nat?” 

“He was,” Natasha agreed. “But he never let us get close, remember? He always kept us at arm’s length so the prophecy wouldn’t kick in and make us forget him.” 

She wasn’t making sense. Coulson … Phil … he was just a private kind of guy who wasn’t … who liked to keep things professional and didn’t want … who ordered Clint’s favorite pizza but never stuck around to eat … left a queue of trashy reality shows on safe houses televisions … didn’t blink when Clint brought up … wasn’t … 

“It’s okay.” Natasha’s hands framed his face; somehow Clint was outside on the rubble-strewn street, sitting on the curb. “Breathe. You need to breathe.”

“I … He … was I? … did he?” A tumble of memories blocked his tongue, chaotic and unorganized. Jokes on the comms. The little quirk of lips when Phil was disappointed. Fresh pots of Clint’s favorite coffee. A brush of hands when he passed out files. 

“Agent Barton. Clint.” Rogers’ command voice stirred Clint out of his spiral. “You’re in New York City. Loki’s defeated. His control is gone. You’re safe.” 

“Nat.” A whisper was all he could manage. “I think …” 

“Shhh.” She squeezed his hand. “It’s disorienting. Don’t fight it; only way is through it.” 

“I missed it.” Tears spilled out of the corner of his eyes. “Oh, fuck me, Tasha. It was him. Fucking hell.” 

Between Loki’s mind fuck and Phil’s death, the next few weeks were a blur to Clint. His apartment was trashed by a falling sky whale -- what the fuck, he wondered, shouldn’t there have been some kind of prophecy about that -- so he followed Natasha like a lost puppy until he found himself in a far too big place in Stark Tower where he could wallow in self-doubt with a killer view of New York City, replaying all the moments he’d misread and overlooked. The stories never told what happened after Fate dropped her ax; most ended with tragedy and death, nary a happy ending in sight. What was he supposed to do now that man who could have been the love of his life was gone and he was still here? 

Three months after the battle on a cool but sunny day, Clint was perched on the tower’s roof, feet dangling over the edge, wasting another hour staring at the damaged skyline. Of all people to join him, Steve Rogers was the last he expected. They’d barely spoken four sentences in a row despite living so close; all Clint really knew was that Rogers looked as depressed as Clint felt. Maybe more, actually, now that Clint got an up-close look at the bags under Rogers’ eyes. 

“Hey,” Rogers said. 

“Hey,” Clint replied. 

Eight minutes of silence followed; Clint found he didn’t mind. Rogers’ shoulders were big enough to serve as a windbreak. Plus, it was nice to not be peppered with “how are you” or “do you want to talk” or “have you eaten” or any of the million other questions the therapists used to get him to deal with his issues. 

“So,” Clint finally said. “What’s a place like this doing in a nice super soldier like you?” 

A flicker of what might be a smile played at the edges of Rogers’ lips then disappeared. “You remind me of someone I used to know. He was the king of bad jokes.” 

“Time-honored strategy. Plausible deniability and emotional avoidance. Gotta CYA, man.” Clint saw Rogers’ confusion. “Cover your ass. CYA. Easier to pretend you didn’t mean it than to deal with the fallout. In case they shut you down.” 

“Oh.” Rogers sat back and the wind whipped at Clint’s ears again. “Oh.” 

Clint let that settle for a bit as Rogers worked through whatever tangle of emotions he’d stumbled on. Guys like Steve and Phil tended to go for self-sacrifice as an answer, i.e. see ditching a plane in the Arctic and going up against Loki alone; Clint, on the other hand, prevaricated, pasted a fake smile on his face, and went on with the show. Rogers’ “he” -- and yeah, didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that one out -- had done the same thing right up until his death, if what Clint had read was true. 

“It’s hard, you know, going on after,” Steve finally began again. “Peg kept saying that prophecies had many meanings but I was so damn sure …” He faded out for a bit, lost in memory before he came back. “The one in my files … the official one … the government made it up, made it fit the whole Captain America narrative. We didn’t have the money for a reading when I was little -- back then you had to pay for the professional ones -- so Mrs. Leone in 6B did it for me. She was half-gypsy … no wait, they call them Romani now I think … and Mom baked her a cocoa powder cake for it.” 

“Mine came from the palm reader at the circus,” Clint admitted. 

“Thing is, when I turned the nose downward, I was thinking of this one line -- your story will end after the fall when winter comes -- and I was so damn sure about the whole ‘sleeping in ice’ thing …” He sighed. “But here I am, alive and still fighting and maybe I got it wrong.”

“Yeah, damn language is slippery, that’s true,” Clint agreed. “But it doesn’t apply to me. Dead is dead; no coming back from that.” 

“I did,” Rogers said. 

“Super soldier,” Clint reminded him. “Phil was a regular breakable human.”

“Yeah, but … look, I assumed my fate was watching Buck fall and following him into the ice,” Steve continued. “I know that Fury called Phil’s death as a way to motivate us and that you missed his interest in you but …” 

Fury called it. That’s what Natasha had said too. 

“... there’s got to be more if we’re still here, don’t you …”

“Did you see it?” Clint interrupted. “Phil. Did you see his body?” 

“What?” came Roger’s confused reply. 

“Did you see him? Phil? Or did Fury just say it?” Clint pushed himself up. 

“Wait … you think …” Rogers followed him as he headed to the door. “But why would …”

“Loki took my heart twice, both times with that damn scepter; I had to lose it to find it.” Clint clattered down the metal stairs towards the fire door. “I didn’t miss Phil -- that was his curse at work. It’s Fury’s lie I almost bought.”

“Would he …” Rogers stopped Clint with a hand on his shoulder. “Fury’s the spy’s spy. If it meant we’d step up …” 

“He’d do it in a heartbeat. And Phil would encourage him to, thinking this was his fate, to inspire the Avengers.” Clint grinned, the first real smile in months. “My heart’s out there; I’ve just got to find it.” 

* * *

Philip James Coulson was reborn in the second house of Taurus with Venus in ascendance and the Chinese sign of the Dragon. Despite the lengths his friend Nick Fury had to go to in order to bring him back, Phil was still the steadfast, loyal man he’d been before with a penchant for self-denial and a preference for following rules. What he wasn’t, however, was willing to settle for being invisible, not after all the years of watching the world go by and letting love slip through his fingers. 

“Visible in the next,” he kept repeating when Nick gave him reasons why no one knew. “This is it, Marcus.” 

Turned out, Phil didn’t have to force the issue. Exactly two weeks, six days, twelve hours, and sixteen minutes after Phil woke up, the door to his room burst open and Avengers spilled into the small space, crowding around his bed. Stark called him Agent Agent and scolded him for making Pepper cry. Thor proclaimed his excitement, loudly, at finding the Son of Coul alive. Banner picked up his chart and started asking medical questions. Cap smiled, patted his leg through the hospital blanket, and welcomed him back with what looked suspiciously like a sheen of tears in his eyes. Natasha nodded, sat down on the end of the bed, and took his left hand in hers. 

But it was Clint’s gaze that captured Phil’s attention, those piercing eyes that changed color on a whim. He looked at Phil, really saw him, and took his right hand, winding their fingers together. 

“Seems these guys think we’re a couple,” Clint said as he leaned in closer. “Not really that crazy after all, is it?” 

Clint kissed him, right there, in front of his childhood idol and a team of superheroes who would come to call him friend. Clint kept kissing him every day as he healed and continued after he moved into the Tower and became the Avengers handler. The rest of the world might not know his name but that was because he kept a low profile, preferring to stay in the command center and oversee the fight. If, sometimes, he regretted that Tony Stark not only remembered him but also constantly interrupted his day to ask weirdly tangential questions, well, he only admitted that to Clint and Natasha and NIck..

As for Clint, they say that everyone has a destiny written in the stars and programmed into their souls, but he learned there’s wiggle room if we’re open to rethinking how we fit in the grand scheme of things. Death isn’t always the end and hearts have a habit of coming home no matter how far they’ve been separated. 

In fact, Love can even thaw a frozen Winter … but that, my friends, is another destiny, one Fate is holding close to her vest and waiting for just the right moment to drop. 

**Author's Note:**

> What I know about astrology can fit into a thimble; call this literary license, okay?


End file.
